Page 284 - Eye of the beholder

STreeT Scene, JaiPur by edWin lord WeekS
Edwin Lord Weeks first traveled to India in 1882-83, and again in 1892. He was a prolific painter, and according to his own letters, spent every day painting and every night developing his photographs, which he probably used for recording the architectural details and backgrounds for his compositions.
The photographs and preliminary studies were to form the basis for many of his Indian and other orientalist Capriccio paintings that were executed much later. Though the major corpus of Week's works were sold in the USA, he also sold completed works in India, Morocco and other destinations during this travels. In fact, it is well known that paintings by Edwin Lord Weeks were a part of Maharaja Prodyot C. Tagore's collection. It is likely that this particular painting was sold by Weeks during the time of his stay in India.
The painting depicts 'Jaipore', a city that Weeks' is known to have visited and painted. It is quite likely that the exact place depicted in the painting is an imaginary one. Weeks often used elements of architecture and landscape from his previous photographs and preparatory sketches to build up a scene. This is also a new, hitherto unknown painting.
The provenance of this painting can be traced back to Satish Chandra Bose, who was the district magistrate of Bankura, West Bengal in the early 1940s, and before that the district magistrate of Darjeeling. Satish Chandra Bose was the classmate of Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee and also well known to Rabindranath Tagore and Prafulla Chandra Roy. This painting was passed down from Satish Chandra Bose to his son Saibal Bose, who sold it to the previous owner, from which it ended up in the Sadhu collection. It is possible that the painting was purchased by Satish Chandra Bose either directly from Edwin Lord Weeks, or came to his collection through another prominent collector.
Years of exposure to heat, dust and tropical humidity had taken a bad toll on the painting. The canvas was covered with a thick layer of grime, and had to go through a laborious process of cleaning and minor retouching before it came back to life. Thereafter, it was framed in a specially designed slip and mounted on a 17th century gilt frame.
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